


From Now On We Are Enemies

by Medvsa



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Altered Mental States, Alternate Universe - Mental Institution, Catatonia, Catatonic, Delusions, Gen, Hallucinations, Mental Anguish, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Platonic Male/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Song Lyrics, Songfic, from now on we are enemies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 15:33:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20010631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medvsa/pseuds/Medvsa
Summary: Songfic for From Now On We Are Enemies by Fall Out Boy((Patrick is basically living inside the music video I've made up for this song))





	From Now On We Are Enemies

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Quick TW for mental health stuff  
> TW!!!!TW!!!!!TW!!!!!!TW!!!!!TW!!!!  
> potential triggers: eating disorders, psychosis, delusions, i think that's it and some of these are iffy but y'know just to be safe.

The stadium was bathed in blue light. Patrick stood on the empty stage, listening to the beginning sound effects. He wondered how many times today he had lived this exact moment. Today. That was a funny way to put it- Patrick didn’t live in days anymore. He had no idea how long he had been in this stadium, how long he had been reliving the same performance over and over and over and over-

Not that this was a stadium, per se, more of a planet. Despite not being able to recall ever being outside of it, Patrick could clearly see the exterior in his mind’s eye- a large Death Star-esque sphere floating in space somewhere, the metal doming made of a light cerulean steel. Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember anything besides _this_ , whatever _this_ was. It seemed to him that he had spent his entire life in this gargantuan blue-themed set-up, singing and dancing with all of his friends and royal subjects. 

But enough of that- the song was starting!

He gripped the neck of his guitar, fingers hovering over the strings in excitement. He attacked the strings, passionately strumming the melody - D, E Major, C- as he sang the opening lyrics. 

“I just want to be better than your- your head’s only medicine. I just want to be better than your- your head’s only medicine.”

“A downward spiral just a pirouette,” He spat into the microphone, the bitter words feeling even better when he sang them in an angry tone. He grinned inwardly- most of the stadium was now cloaked in darkness, the only light coming from the spotlight that was trained carefully on the singer, bathing him in the blue light that was custom in this world. He knew what hid in the shadows. “G-g-getting worse ‘til there’s n-n-nothing left. What good comes of something when I’m just the ghost of nothing, nothing?”

“I’m just a man on the balcony singing ‘Nobody will ever remember me.’ Rejoice, rejoice and fall to your knees.”

“ _For a_ -”

“Lunatic of a god or a god of a lunatic oh-”

The stadium was once again washed in an electric shade of blue. Patrick smiled as his friends appeared. 

There were the front row dancers, faces painted white with smiles stretched so big that Patrick worried their faces would split open and collapse. They rose now, some hefting up Victorian-style ballroom skirts, other’s being mindful of the tight space between them. 

“Their faces are dancing- they’re dancing ‘til, ‘til they can’t stand it,” 

A giant rose in the back, mile long legs sending shadows across the crowd, which surged and swayed to the music. 

“Composer but never composed, sing the symphonies of the overdosed. Composer but never composed, singing: ‘I only want what I can’t have, I only want what I can’t have.’”

He lifted the guitar from his shoulders and it vanished from his grasp. He strutted off the stage and into the crowd; joining the manic, chaotic, patch-work choreography his subjects created. 

“Heralded as a king before I had a birthday with double digits,” 

A mime in white ballerina dress twirled past him.

“Fit the crown to my head but I was only a kid,” Patrick gestured to the heavy crown that had materialized on his head, “Yeah I was only a kid, hey!”

He tossed the crown into the crowd, letting them go crazy as it glinted in the blue light like a pure bronze, jewel encrusted frisby. He then jumped, landing on the seat of one of the sapphire velvet theater chairs, toothpick legs bending unsteadily beneath his emaciated frame. 

“I’m just a man on the balcony singing nobody will ever remember me- rejoice,” He lifted his arms once with the word, as if the pulsating, primitive crowd of dancers before him were an orchestra he was conducting, “Rejoice and fall to your knees,”

He let his arms fall, bending forward in an exaggerated bow as the stadium plunged back into darkness for half a beat.

“Oh!”

The lights boomed back on and he jumped from the seat into the swirling whirlpool of twisting bodies. 

“Lunatic of a god or a god of a lunatic _oh_ , their faces are dancing, they’re dancing ‘til- ‘til they can’t stand it,”

He danced with his performers- his grotesque alien dancers and circus freaks- all of them beautiful in a haunting, otherworldly way under the purifying blue glow. 

“Composer but never composed,” He slow-dance style dipped a man in an oxford blue tailcoat and top hat, his ears where his eyes should be but with that elastic smile spread wide on his face, “Sing the symphonies of the overdosed-” He was twirled into the arms of the blonde mustached lady with four tits, “Composer but never composed singing: ‘I only want what I can’t have, I only want what I can’t have-’”

He was alone now, the phrase ripping from his vocal cords with the emotional exertion, pounding on his bony chest with a fist as he doubled over, “‘I only want what I can’t have, I only want what I can’t- I can’t have!”

The scene froze around Patrick as he straightened, gazing at the blue trail being lit up in front of him through the crowd. He followed it, carefully stepping over and around his stone-cold companions. 

At the end of the path he found two full-length mirrors, facing each other but roughly 15 feet apart. 

“-to be better than your, your head’s only medicine-”

Patrick approached them cautiously, peering curiously at his gaunt reflection. This was the only glimpse of himself that he ever caught, and each time it haunted him while simultaneously leaving him dumbfounded. He was _scrawny_ , thinner than he felt like he should be, somewhere just beyond skeletal. The blue light caught on his chiseled cheekbones, casting shadows on his hollow cheeks and sunken in eyes. His emaciated frame was bound completely in blue- or maybe it was just the light. 

“I just want to be better than your- your head’s only medicine.”

He walked into the mirror and everything faded to black. 

“I’m just a man on the balcony singing: ‘Nobody will ever remember me.’ Rejoice, rejoice and fall to your knees.”

He stepped through the navy curtain, out onto the crescent balcony seemingly a hundred feet from the stadium floor. The zaffre lights came back on, revealing his subjects knelt on the floor in prayer, all jumping back up at the signal. Their prayers had been answered, their azure savior had returned to them. They cheered and wept, continued on dancing with a ferocious energy that had long surpassed what could be considered borderline madness. 

“I’m just a man on the balcony singing: ‘Nobody will ever remember me.’ Rejoice! Rejoice! And fall to your knees.”

He climbed over the balcony railing, jumping off the ledge as time paused for the second time, but not quite literally this time. He heard a few gasps ring out from the crowd below and he smirked, flipping gracefully through the air. 

He hit the ground dancing- the stadium erupted. 

“Lunatic of a god or a god of a lunatic _oh_ \- their faces are dancing, they’re dancing ‘til, ‘til they can’t stand it!”

Patrick could no longer dance- the song had completely taken over and every ounce of his energy went into pouring the lyrics out of him. It felt like his soul was being born again- every cell in him was inverted and decaying and multiplying at a dizzying rate. Patrick _was_ the song, he lived and breathed it. 

“Composer but never composed, sing the symphonies of the overdosed. Composer but never composed, singing: ‘I only want what I can’t have, I only want what I can’t have-’” He was pounding on his chest again, “‘I only want what I can’t have,” and now he was on his knees on the floor, slamming his fist against the concrete as he screamed out the lyrics and the stadium - now empty - faded to black, “‘I only want what I can’t- I can’t have!”

-

Pete took a deep breath, hands still gripped white-knuckle on the steering wheel even though he was already in a parking spot. He closed his eyes- he could do this. 

He put his car into park and turned it off- even though what he wanted to do was to peel out of this parking lot and get as far away from here as possible. He didn’t want to face the conversation waiting for him inside the cafe- the emotions, the memories, the guilt. 

He got out of his car and headed for the door. 

Andy was already there, waiting for him in a booth in the back room. Pete found him with ease- the cafe wasn’t very easy. 

Andy had already ordered his drink and, while Pete appreciated the kind gesture, he almost wished he hadn’t so Pete could have wasted a few more minutes before actually talking about shit. 

“Hey, man, how’s it been?” Andy asked, retaining that classic, almost iconic Andy Hurley style personality and look he’d maintained since day one. 

“Oh, y’know, it’s going. How about you?”

They ran through all the general niceties, mutually relishing in the relative normalcy before the conversation had to take it’s expected turn for the worse, as it always did. 

Pete looked down, picking up his latte with trembling hands and taking a desperate sip to ease the Saharan dryness his mouth had suddenly taken on. He set his latte back down, clearing his throat and refusing to meet Andy’s eyes. 

“I visited him again today.” He said simply, knowing he didn’t need to elaborate for Andy to get the topic of the vague statement in the same way Pete didn’t need to look up to know that the other man was giving him that puppy-dog look of sympathy. 

“He’s not _him_ anymore, he’s not Patrick!” Pete ground out, the same rage and frustration that always came with this conversation bubbling up inside him now, “I miss him!”

He broke, tears sticking his eyes as he recalled the image of his former best friend from earlier that day. 

Patrick’s room in the facility was bare- white walls, white bedding, a white linoleum floor. It was ‘standard’, secure, safe, sterile- all those ‘s’ words they used when they didn’t want to admit that it was a hospital room. Patrick had been propped up in his wheelchair, as he had been since he’d stopped having any use for his legs. That vacant look was still on his face, eyes open but glossy- a mean trick to force you to look him in those teal-blue eyes and acknowledge that he was just a shell. 

And he was so _small_ \- wrists like pencils, ankles like a roll of quarters, and the white cotton hospital gown and socks made him look even sicker. 

Pete had smoothed the strawberry blonde hair from his pale, clammy forehead, ran a thumb across razor sharp cheekbones over empty, cavernous cheeks. There was no point in trying to talk to him- Patrick had been completely unresponsive and nonfunctional for the past two years. 

Andy scooted out of his side of the booth, coming to join Pete and pull him into a hug, rubbing his back consolingly while whispering soothing words to him. 

For the millionth time in the past two years, Pete thought about how he wished it was actually possible to sell his soul. He’d do it in a heartbeat to have one last conversation with his best friend. 

-

The stadium was bathed in blue light. Patrick stood on the empty stage, listening to the beginning sound effects. He wondered how many times today he had lived this exact moment. Today.

**Author's Note:**

> I came up with this idea for the music video last summer when every song except this one was deleted from my phone while I was on a roadtrip. We were travelling for 27 hours and we had 15 left to go when everything vanished from my phone and I didn't have service through the entire state of Montana. I listened to this song from North Dakota to Washington, and honestly it's the only thing that's gotten me through so many rough times since then.


End file.
